First (spoiler-free) Thoughts on #MOBY (Outlander book 8)

It took me not quite four days to read through the 814 pages of #MOBY (aka as #Outlander book 8 aka “Written in my own Heart’s Blood” *g*) and it will take me at least another week to gather all my thoughts in a way that I could write a real review blog post about it. I’m not sure if I really will do that. I don’t want to announce it now and not get around to it, as it has happened with so much stuff in the last months/years. So for all future #MOBY readers: dont’t worry, this blog post will be spoiler free.

What can I say? I loved it! I absolutely loved it! All of it! I was a bit worried that I wouldn’t, because I had some problems with ECHO (book 7). I felt some storylines in ECHO were a bit drawn out and that the book in a whole felt a bit disjointed. At least I didn’t quite the shape of the narrative, if that makes sense. But it didn’t feel this way with MOBY. Not at all. It was perfectly paced and switching from one timeline to the other or from one point of view to another always worked seamlessly well. Most impressive was how all the various plots intertwine and how the storylines cross each other and how various characters meet each other again and again without these incidents feeling fabricated.
I loved that some storylines came full circle in a way that made me happy and look forward to future events. Some questions still remain and there are new questions and that’s ok as well, because there will be a book 9. I loved all the additional revelations about time travel and time travellers and am very curious to see how that will be continued in the next novel.

Most of all I loved that Diana once again managed to write a book that has kept me on the edge of my seat for four days. That she managed to make me scream “OMG” and make my heart race for several chapters (37 to 46 to be exact *g*). That she made me experience all the emotions I expect from a fantastic novel: I laughed and cried and I was happy and I got angry and I was scared and… everything else on the scale of human emotions.
I basically love that for the last 20 years she has created characters I deeply care about. Not just the Frasers/Murrays I love so much, but also the new additions “to the clan”, Rachel and Denzell and Lord John’s brother Hal and Hal’s daughter Dottie. Dottie is kind of a badass woman in her own right. I mentioned it on Twitter already: I’m a huge fan of all the strong female characters in the Outlander novels. It’s not just Claire and Bree. It’s Jenny and Marsali and now also Rachel and Dottie and I love them all to pieces.
And because I care so much about these characters I sometimes also wanted to throttle Diana for putting these characters in peril again and again. At some point I was seriously worried who would be the next to be shot, stabbed or seriously wounded in any other way, because it felt like they were “dropping like flies” in or around the battle of Monmouth *g* They all made it through this battle though, so don’t worry…

The end of this book is not quite a cliffhanger, but a surprise (a good one!) and of course it left me with new questions. Not in the bad “OMG, what will happen?” way, but rather in a curious “Mmmh, how DID that happen?” way. And that’s ok.

Well done, Diana. Very well done! Thank you!

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